Latest news with #ClubTropicana
Scotsman
05-05-2025
- Health
- Scotsman
Hundreds take part in Race for Life at Hopetoun House, South Queensferry
Kirsteen Sullivan, MP for Bathgate and Linlithgow, sounded the horn at the start line to send the runners off on the 3k, 5k and 10k courses in the picturesque grounds. More than £108,000 was raised for Cancer Research UK- vital funds which will enable scientists to find new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer. Ms Sullivan said: 'It's a privilege to support Race for Life in honour of everyone going through cancer right now. 'Almost every family, including my own, has been affected by cancer. The outlook for people with cancer has changed dramatically over the years, thanks to the efforts of Cancer Research UK and wonderful fundraisers making sure the best research is available to help get the best outcomes. 'Thankfully, there are many more effective treatments out there today, making it possible for people to live well with cancer for many years. But it's important we continue to make progress and to ensure the research is there to support that.' A group from the award-winning Sarah Hendry School of Dance in Glenrothes entertained the crowds with Highland Dance moves along the route. The Rock Choir from Livingston, Linlithgow and Edinburgh also performed hits including Green Green Grass by George Ezra and Club Tropicana by Wham. Volunteers from Queensferry Sea Cadets helped at the event. And Sharon Holgarth from Event Buddies Scotland was at the picnic area offering face painting. Race for Life events will be taking place across the country this spring. Since it began in 1994, more than 10 million people have taken part in Race for Life, contributing millions of pounds towards life-saving research. 1 . Warming up Participants get ready with a warm up at Cancer Research UK's Race for Life at Hopetoun House | supplied Photo Sales 2 . Sounding the horn Bathgate and Linlithgow MP Kirsteen Sullivan sounds the horn to start Cancer Research UK's Race for Life at Hopetoun House on Sunday May 4 | supplied Photo Sales 3 . Team Abhilasha Team Abhilasha at the Race for Life, inspired by Dr Abhilasha Sinha (centre with pink sunglasses) a psychiatrist from Edinburgh who is in remission from breast cancer. They completed the 5k raising more than £800. | supplied Photo Sales 4 . Streamers Streamers at Cancer Research UK's Race for Life at Hopetoun House | supplied Photo Sales Related topics: Cancer
Daily Record
05-05-2025
- Health
- Daily Record
Bathgate and Linlithgow MP sounds horn to start Race for Life event at South Queensferry
Kirsteen Sullivan MP was chosen to sound the horn at the start line to send hundreds off on the 3k, 5k and 10k courses in the picturesque grounds of Hopetoun House. People of all ages united against cancer by taking part in Scotland's first 2025 Race for Life events. Kirsteen Sullivan, MP for Bathgate and Linlithgow, was chosen to sound the horn at the start line to send hundreds off on the 3k, 5k and 10k courses in the picturesque grounds of Hopetoun House, South Queensferry. More than £108,000 was raised for Cancer Research UK- vital funds which will enable scientists to find new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer- to bring about a world where everybody lives longer, better lives, free from the fear of cancer. And 30 miles away, in the University of Stirling grounds near Gannochy Sports Centre £95,000 was raised on Sunday at Race for Life Stirling. Kirsteen said: 'It's a privilege to support Race for Life in honour of everyone going through cancer right now. 'Almost every family, including my own, has been affected by cancer. The outlook for people with cancer has changed dramatically over the years, thanks to the efforts of Cancer Research UK and wonderful fundraisers making sure the best research is available to help get the best outcomes. 'Thankfully, there are many more effective treatments out there today, making it possible for people to live well with cancer for many years. But it's important we continue to make progress and to ensure the research is there to support that.' The Rock Choir from Livingston, Linlithgow and Edinburgh also performed hits including Green Green Grass by George Ezra and Club Tropicana by Wham. Brothers eight-year-old Quinn Duffy and Leo Duffy, 10, who are both members of Linlithgow Athletics Club were first home in the 3k completing the course in 12 mins 40 seconds. And 13-year-old Orla Oakley, of Livingston Athletics Club was first home in the 5k in 23 minutes 22 seconds, raising £230 for Cancer Research UK helped by her twin sister Isla Oakley, her brother Ruaridh Oakley, 10, and her mum Catherine Oakley, 45. The family took part in honour of an uncle who currently has cancer. Lisa Adams, Cancer Research UK's spokesperson in Scotland, said: 'We are incredibly grateful to everyone who took part in Race for Life. 'No matter how cancer affects us, life is worth racing for. 'Sadly nearly one in two of us will get cancer in our lifetime but all of us can support the research that will beat it. We're proud that Race for Life has had such a positive impact. 'Every pound raised supports our life-saving work, which has helped double cancer survival in the UK over the last 50 years. 'It was a fantastic day at Race for Life, full of emotion, courage, tears, laughter and hope as people celebrated the lives of those dear to them who have survived cancer and remembered loved ones lost to the disease. 'Now we're asking everyone who took part to return the money they're raised as soon as possible. Every donation, every pound raised will make a real difference. '
Daily Mirror
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Inside wild Ibiza hotel where sex-addict owner served 'cocaine served for breakfast'
Pikes Hotel in Ibiza was known for its wild parties and extravagance, having attracted A-list guests including Freddie Mercury, Kate Moss, and Grace Jones over the years Having set up Pikes Hotel in 1978, Anthony 'Tony' Pike's Ibiza hotel soon became known for its extravagance. Over the years it attracted an array of famous faces, including Freddie Mercury, Kate Moss, Grace Jones, and Jade Jagger - and even now it remains an iconic part of the island. Sadly Tony died from prostate cancer in 2019. The club - now known as Pikes Ibiza - first rose to fame when British pop group Wham! filmed their 1983 hit Club Tropicana there. Band singer George Michael got on so well with Tony that he even appeared in the video as a barman, The Sun reported. In the 2017 memoir Mr Pikes: The Story Behind The Ibiza Legend, Tony claimed George was "such a good-looking c***" and was "surprised" when they made "tender and passionate" love to each other. He wrote: "I said to him that he must pull so many women. He told me he was gay. 'What a f***ing waste!' I exclaimed. George roared with laughter. He'd probably heard that one a few times before, although his sexuality was a closely-guarded secret at that stage of his career." It wasn't the only intimate tale Tony would reveal, once describing himself as a "sex addict". He claimed to have bedded around 3,000 women including 80s Bond girl Grace Jones after the pair met at an orgy. "It was total darkness," he said "All I could hear was music playing and the smell of sex and marijuana. Big candles had burnt down to give a dark loom of light . . . bodies were everywhere on the floor." Tony went on to say that he had the best sex of his life with the "entertaining and warm" Grace during their 15-month fling. "We'd walk in somewhere and the whole place would stop and just stare at her," he said. "She had such an incredible allure." In her 2015 autobiography, meanwhile, Grace said that Tony had an "enormous penis" and she was "happy to take care of it". Parties like Freddie Mercury 's 41st in September 1987, not long after the legendary singer's AIDS diagnosis, pulled in a range of mega celebrities, who racked up a gigantic bar bill. Tony Curtis, Naomi Campbell, Spandau Ballet, and Bon Jovi all attend the event that a 1996 People magazine report said saw 350 bottles of champagne drunk, a firework display that could be seen from Majorca, and a dessert in the shape of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Cathedral. That dessert collapsed and was replaced with a sponge cake two metres long featuring the notes of Freddie's song 'Barcelona'. The party ended after three days when the front of the hotel caught fire, leading to a wall collapsing. "Money was no object" for the Queen singer, Tony claimed. He said the rock legend "sought sanctuary in the hotel and wanted a party to remember". He added: "When I asked him about the budget he laughed and said there was none… We could freeze the pool and have skating elephants if we wanted. He just wanted it to be wild." Drugs were never too far away, Tony also claimed. He claimed he and Freddie would "often lie in bed for hours, talking, doing lines". He added: "Freddie's cocaine intake was off the scale at times… I don't think he even thought about how much he was taking half the time. He'd say, 'Tony, would you mind racking up again, please?'" The use of drugs led to claims that cocaine was served up on cornflakes for guests, but Tony later said this would have been a "waste". Nevertheless, the reputation of the resort grew and soon caught the attention of the authorities. Spanish singing superstar Julio Iglesias sorted it all out, according to Tony, when he invited the local police chief. Tony said: "We were standing by the pool bar next to each other and Julio put his arms around our necks and pulled us together in a headlock. "Julio said, as he held us in the same position, 'Now, I want you to be friends. You two are very important people on the island. If you fight, it will be disastrous for Ibiza.' I was left alone after that, so thank you, Julio." In the 1990s, Tony looked to sell the club to Italian TV producer Enrico Forti. However, tragedy struck when Tony's son Anthony 'Dale' Pike flew with Forti to Miami. Dale was killed in February 1998, dumped in a forest after being shot in the head twice. Forti was convicted of Dale's murder - but it was seen as a miscarriage of justice in Italy and Forti returned there last year.
The Independent
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
‘The police were scared there would be riots': When Wham! took Western pop to China
T he Beatles at JFK, this was not. 'Where's all the screaming kids, then?' George Michael asked, scanning the arrivals hall at Beijing international airport in April 1985 to find the wind whistling through the east Asian branch of Club Tropicana. Wham! arrived in China at the peak of their fame, yet rather than scrum their way through hordes of howling girls – as was the custom everywhere else – the doe-eyed pop phenomenon were met by a clutch of photographers, a hall full of nonplussed onlookers and a gathering of besuited government officials. At least one of their welcoming party had brought his child, toddling up to Michael's bandmate Andrew Ridgeley in the uniform of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, getting a snapshot and then swiftly running away again. 'I think I scared the living daylights out of him,' Ridgeley chuckled, little knowing he'd just lived out a miniature metaphor for the first major Western pop tour of China, staged 40 years ago this week. At the rear, backing singer Janet Mooney was one of the 11-strong band accompanying George and Andrew into this uncharted, awkwardly officious territory. 'We'd never experienced anything like that,' she tells The Independent today. 'Everywhere we went they were mobbed, except in China. They had no experience of Western pop culture. I don't think they had that culture of fans waiting at the stage door and stuff.' By 1985, these two Hertfordshire heartthrobs had conquered around 80 per cent of the globe. Instant smashes such as 'Young Guns (Go for It)' and 'Bad Boys' had made them overnight UK chart sensations, and their 1984 second album Make It Big had proven a self-fulfilling prophecy. 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go' and 'Careless Whisper' had topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, pushing the album to over 10 million in sales. In China, closed off to most Western music in the early Eighties, they were far less known. But Wham!'s two pioneering arena shows over 10 days there (Jean-Michel Jarre was the only Westerner to have played the country before, in 1981) were cued up as both a worldwide lap of honour for the band and the last word in barrier-shattering pan-cultural exchanges that would expand China's cultural vista for decades to come. But behind its outward scenes of polite ambassadors' receptions and big bouffant pop thrills, the tour was routed through a world of oppression, manipulation and outright terror, its wheels greased by government payouts and with both the CIA and the Chinese secret police angling to control it for intelligence and propaganda purposes. The real reason for the absence of 1,000 hair-tearing fans doing the jitterbug across Beijing airport in the throes of Wham!-mania? Manager Simon Napier-Bell, mastermind and facilitator of the tour, had refused to pay the government to supply them. That the tour happened at all was largely down to the machinations of one mysterious 'Professor Rolf'. Tasked in 1983 with making Wham! the biggest band in the world within 12 months (or lose their management contract), Napier-Bell and his Big Life Management partner Jazz Summers vowed to open up the band to China's potential market of 400 million 14-35-year-olds. On his first scouting trip, he spent days cold-calling ministers of the Chinese Communist Party, inviting them to lunch to discuss the huge investment potential of Western pop music, and got nowhere. Then, on a flight to Japan, he met a gentleman calling himself Professor Rolf, who had strings to pull. '[He] said he had contacts within the Chinese government and could help me,' Napier-Bell told Mojo in 2023. Sure enough, on his next visit, Napier-Bell's lunch offer was taken up by a minor minister, then another, then another. During his regular monthly visits, he found himself wining and dining more than 140 government delegates to soften China's tight cultural borders for Wham!'s invasion. He even created brochures of a range of acts they might invite to bridge the East-West pop divide, sabotaging Queen's chances by presenting Freddie Mercury in particularly flamboyant style, but George Michael at his most wholesome. Still, the Chinese authorities objected to Michael's more lascivious dance moves, insisting he avoid any such lewdness lest he pollute the spiritual purity of the nation's youth. The Minister of Culture put out a stern statement ahead of the shows. 'He basically advised the youth that were there to go to the concert and watch it but not learn from it,' Michael said in the tour film Wham! in China: Foreign Skies, 'which seems a pretty ridiculous thing to say.' This, after all, was a country unacclimatised to the exultant sounds and immoral gyrations of global youth culture. Discos and dancing had only recently been legalised and there was no pop chart. Most foreign radio was blocked and fans of Western pop decadence were treated brutally. 'Back then, if we wanted to listen to pop music with lyrics like that, we had to do that in secret,' Wham!'s onstage presenter Kan Lijun told the BBC. 'If you were caught, you would be taken to the police station and they would keep you there all night. It was a time of many taboos.' 'I was a 15-year-old boy but I had to stay at home after 8.30pm,' a fan called Li Shizhong explained. 'At that time, if you played a guitar on the street, you would be considered a hooligan.' Naturally, pop music had become a signifier of the rising defiance amongst China's young guns and bad boys. 'I was dancing to [Wham!'s] music in underground disco and rock parties in my art school in Chongqing,' another fan, Rose Tang, told The Washington Post shortly before she became a student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. 'The music was really instrumental in cultivating our rebellious spirit.' Moreover, the tour's organisation became an increasingly tangled web, as the government insisted on the band using a 100-strong local crew at great expense and the US secret service attempted to turn the tour into a clandestine surveillance mission. 'Because we were dealing with this insular regime, the CIA were on my back; they wanted to pay me to work for them, but not tell anyone,' said Napier-Bell. He shunned the spooks' advances. 'I got to know a lot of Chinese secret police, they were a lot more clever.' On arrival, Mooney was hit by a million-volt culture shock. 'It was a little bit like going back in time,' she says. 'It was very much still everyone on bicycles and [in] Mao jackets. It was completely different to how we perceive it now.' With a film crew and coterie of international journalists in tow, the Wham! entourage was carefully managed. Barred from wandering around on their own, they were ushered between formal dinners, sightseeing trips to the Great Wall and shopping jaunts, where Ridgeley bought a Mao jacket to go alongside his tartan suit stagewear. The Chinese authorities objected to Michael's more lascivious dance moves, insisting he avoid any such lewdness lest he pollute the spiritual purity of the nation's youth. Mooney recalls one eye-opening visit to a local market. 'I remember looking at this big open market stall covered in animal bits,' she says. 'There was a big tub beside me and a huge salamander came out of it. There was a woman walking along with these little strings of frogs and live chickens in a string bag. Stuff you don't really see at home.' According to tour manager Jake Duncan, everywhere they went 'the band, and crew, were treated with a mix of feigned adulation and cultural perplexity'. The first show, at Beijing's 13,000 capacity Workers' Gymnasium on 7 April, was equally disorienting. While the band rocked through 'Club Tropicana', 'Wake Me Up…' and 'Young Guns (Go for It)' with their usual roof-lifting exuberance, the crowd – hemmed in by ranks of police officers – remained polite, subdued and all but motionless. 'You could feel the excitement, but they didn't really know how to respond to it,' says Mooney. 'No one had ever seen anything like that before,' said Lijun. 'We were used to people who stood still when they performed. All the young people were amazed, and everybody was tapping their feet. Of course, the police weren't happy and they were scared there would be riots.' It later transpired that the Beijing audience was under strict instruction to remain seated. 'I foolishly asked the support act, a breakdancer called Trevor, to go down into the audience and get them all going, which unsettled the secret police,' Napier-Bell said. 'They made an announcement that everyone should stay in their seats.' It didn't help that Lindsay Anderson, the director of the tour film, requested the house lights be turned on for crowd shots, subduing an audience already afraid of retribution for seeming to enjoy themselves. There were reports that one of the more lively attendees was removed and beaten. The result was one of the hardest shows Wham! ever played, the upper tiers of fans going relatively wild while the spotlit, camera-strewn stalls were rigid with fear. 'The first feeling was of failure,' Michael told Rolling Stone in 1986. 'There was no way we could communicate. And when we actually found out what had gone on I was just furious.' Michael wasn't the only member of the touring party struggling with the experience. On the flight to the second show in Canton, Portuguese trumpeter Raul D'Oliveira suffered a psychotic episode, reportedly drawing out a knife and stabbing himself in the stomach while backing singers Pepsi & Shirlie stood screaming beside him. When he then forced his way into the cockpit, the pilot made an emergency dive to attempt to disarm and subdue him, and the plane briefly returned to Beijing to offload him into local psychiatric care. 'It was very traumatic for all of us,' says Mooney, 'mostly because we had to land a couple of times in bad weather and that was not great, and of course something not very nice was happening to a friend of ours.' The incident resulted in horrifying headlines back home and much stress on the tour. 'We had no way of contacting [our families],' Mooney says, 'We didn't have mobiles and stuff back then so we couldn't call them and tell them where we were or what we were doing after that plane thing, that everyone was alright.' D'Oliveira suffered only minor injuries, the rest of the entourage was unharmed, and the two-date tour closed with a more permissive second show for 5,000 fans in the more Westernised Canton. 'Now our country has adopted an open policy, we have the chance to see this type of programme – we are so lucky,' one fan told Anderson's film crew, but the intended cultural explosion soon faltered. It would be 10 years before another major Western band – Roxette – would play in China. Yet, before it went-went, the tour undoubtedly woke China up to the pizzazz and possibilities of Western pop music. Over the Eighties and Nineties, in Wham!'s image, local acts would develop a thriving homegrown market in Cantopop arena shows, and seeing people dancing around and playing guitars on stage for the first time was a revelation for many fans. 'In the early 1980s, pop songs from Hong Kong were very popular in mainland China,' music writer Wen Huang told the Indiana Times in 2016, 'and after the concert, college students and people in the music industry started to get interested in rock'n'roll.' The tour made cultural ripples in China, but tsunamis across the rest of the world. 'Wham! were able to leapfrog from an initial, small, handful of satellite theatre dates, directly into outdoor stadiums in the most prestigious US markets,' says Duncan, whileNapier-Bell credits the global publicity around the tour for instigating the modernisation of communist China. 'When Wham! went to China, nobody in China knew they were there, but the whole of the rest of the world knew it,' he told Yahoo!. 'In the next 10 years, billions and billions and billions of dollars floated in. Modern Beijing was built from that money, really.' All of which, at the time, passed Wham! and their band by, like the PA announcements that kept the Wham! devotees of Beijing in check. 'It was a cultural experience like no one else had really ever had,' Mooney says. 'At the time, it's almost too big a situation for you to really understand what is happening.'
The Independent
31-03-2025
- The Independent
The best hotels in Ibiza for beach holidays, family resorts and five-star luxury
On a tiny island with nearly 40,000 hotel beds, according to Statista, anyone planning a trip to Ibiza is certainly spoilt for choice (and that's not counting villas or Airbnbs). But which of those hotel beds are actually good? It's a tough question, not least because the variety of hotels in Ibiza is vast, and comparing one property to the next is like, well, you get the gist. There are the big, trendy names (Six Senses, Nobu, The Standard); the places so easily confused with a beach or a restaurant (La Paloma or La Pandilla? Port de Sant Miquel or Cala San Miguel?); and, of course, dozens upon dozens of four- to six-room hideaways that most of their guests would prefer to keep hidden. In this edit of the best hotels, presented in no particular order, you'll find places that offer unobtrusive, excellent service; converted fincas that make you seriously contemplate relocating; and hotels where you can indulge in the island's live-and-kicking party scene before stumbling back to your room. 1. Los Enamorados hotel Many regular visitors to Ibiza have never been to Portinatx: it's the island's northernmost point, so at 45 minutes from Ibiza Town or the airport, it's a little bit of a trek, but it's where you'll find the iconic, black-and-white striped lighthouse and worth-the-trip spots like Los Enamorados. Named for its stylish owners ('the lovers'), a French, former basketball player and his Dutch fashion editor wife, it's just eclectic enough to feel cool and different, with an attention to detail that also makes it feel luxe. If you can get a booking for one of the nine rooms, it's an excellent base for a different sort of Ibizan holiday: the fishing cove offers paddleboard and kayak rentals, the on-site restaurant is a buzzy place for sundowners, and the coves and beaches in the north (Benirrás, Cala Xarraca, and S'illot des Renclí, among others) are unbeatable. Book now 2. Casa Maca hotel If you've been to Ibiza, there's a good chance you've experienced the Mambo Group's brand of hospitality, whether that's at Café Mambo, the original sunset and pre-Pacha party spot, or one of its other venues around the island (such as La Torre). Casa Maca falls into the same category of great food, music, and people. Since opening in 2018, it's become famous for its cocktails, which are served out of an Airstream, its vibey, open-fire dinners, and, if you're lucky enough to nab one of the 10 rooms, its refined yet contemporary lifestyle. Plus, like most of the group's other venues, its location is unbeatable: in the idyll of the countryside, yet only five minutes from Ibiza Town (dinner is served, in fact, with a side of Dalt Vila views). 3. Pikes Ibiza hotel Pikes' reputation precedes it, and we're pleased to report that it does, in fact, live up to all the hype. Amazing vibes, brilliant parties, excellent food and perfect recovery sessions: Pikes delivers it all in spades—and that's not even mentioning the fact that the video for Wham!'s Club Tropicana was shot here or that Freddie's, the club in the back, is named for Freddie Mercury, who celebrated his 40th birthday here, which always makes for great chat. In recent years, they've also refurbed some of the rooms and the showers now have Aesop amenities (and much better water pressure), so even though it's a good-time hotel, there's no shortage of mod cons and quality behind all the fun. 4. Es Cucons hotel It may not be one of the hotels that's always mentioned or wildly popular, but make no mistake: everyone knows Es Cucons. A favourite for those in the know, or anyone who values the comfort that comes with a consistent, tried-and-tested property, it's nestled in the Santa Agnés valley, surrounded by fragrant fig and almond trees. A working farmhouse in the late 17th century, it was taken over by a local family in the late 1990s, whose grit (literally: ask to see the photo album they've put together from those days) and good taste transformed it into the luxe rural haven that it is today. With 15 rooms, lush gardens and myriad seating areas (all cute, all comfortable) dotted around a serene pool, it's the epitome of relaxed elegance. 5. Atzaró hotel There was a time in the 2000s when you couldn't see an Ibiza post on Facebook without glimpsing Atzaró, so pervasive was its 'love' sign for weddings and its 43-metre pool. These days, the hotel is still a tried-and-tested entity, with the next generation of family owners having gotten involved and updated it accordingly. Case in point: movie nights in the open-air cinema at the far end of the huge veggie garden (screening classics such as Sunset Boulevard and Ghost, with Demi Moore) and seasonal events with dinner cooked and hosted by Yotam Ottolenghi. Even if there's nothing 'special' happening while you're there, each of the 24 rooms is tasteful and the spa is still frequented by regulars and locals, so also worth a visit. 6. Can Sastre hotel Whether you're in Ibiza with friends, family, or for a romantic getaway, Can Sastre is perfect if your main criteria is that your hotel have fewer than 10 rooms. Once you check in, you'll get a clicker for the main gate, so you can come and go as you please—essentially inviting you to treat this as your home while you're on the island, which it will certainly feel like. There's no 'check in' area; just an outdoor living area and cool, indoor dining room-cum-kitchen where someone is always happy to make you a snack. Help yourself to something from the honesty bar, take a dip in the pool or take a nap on one of the oversized loungers or under the blissful fans in your boho chic, stylish room. Address: Camí Vell de Sant Mateu, s/n, 07816, San Rafel, Ibiza 7. Nativo hotel Nativo is the sister hotel to Aguas de Ibiza, an island institution and a great luxury offering in and of itself, with 99 rooms and a good location in Siesta, near Santa Eulalia so you're close to all the amenities of a larger town. Indeed, there's not a lot of criteria that Nativo doesn't satisfy: if you've got kids in tow, it's an excellent choice for families as it has a toddler-friendly pool and lots of toys for playing in the sand (which covers a large portion of the main level and restaurant). It's plenty large enough for groups of different sizes—the Swimup Suites are a crowdpleaser—and if you're a couple looking to recharge, the adults-only pool on the rooftop is calling your name. Address: C/ de los Claveles 24, 07849, Siesta, Santa Eulária des Riu, Ibiza 8. Mondrian hotel Part of the Ennismore group, which is majority owned by Accor, one of the world's largest hospitality brands (they're the company behind everyone from the Fairmont, Sofitel, Raffles and Hoxton to Pullman, Novotel and Ibis), Mondrian is a big hotel, with 154 rooms and many facilities shared with Hyde next door (which has another 401 rooms). And in the case of the Mondrian, bigger is better: there are amenities galore here, from a great kids club to three pools, seven restaurants, and, best of all, direct access to Cala Llonga beach and the ferry that passes by on its way to Formentera. 9. Pure House hotel While there are plenty of fincas that have been converted to hotels since they were first built hundreds of years ago, Pure House feels quite special. Its owner, Caroline, oversees everything with a meticulous eye (and the help of her hotel manager, Damien), and her good taste and calm demeanor explains why the five rooms (four bedrooms and one suite) are so stylish and comfortable—all macrame wall hangings, knobby wood stools and soft, embroidered cushions so you can pretty much take a siesta wherever you please. In between all that relaxing, take a stroll through the surrounding 12-hectare olive grove and forest. 10. Hacienda Na Xamena hotel Hacienda Na Xamena opened in the 1970s and was Ibiza's first five-star hotel, an accolade that the family who own it have retained ever since. Surprisingly, it's a great spot for those travelling with kids and teens, and also ideal for couples, thanks to a whole host of amenities (think a screening room, games area with foosball and table tennis, two pools, smart restaurant, a rack of electric bikes, and a brilliant spa with an eight-pool thalassotherapy experience). Best of all, the hotel was smartly built into the side of a cliff, meaning nearly every single one of the 77 rooms has dreamy, unobstructed views of the Med. 11. Aguamadera hotel There's no shortage of woo-woo in Ibiza (the island has long been considered a magical, spiritual place, whatever you believe in), but whether you choose it for being 'a secluded hideaway where nature, food, art and sound amplify the essence of wellbeing and holistic living' (their words), there is absolutely no doubt that Aguamadera is a brilliant hotel. Yes, it is stylish to the max (all beige and terracotta fabrics, polished concrete floors, built-in, hand-shaped plaster furnishings, and ceramics placed just so), but the service, 11 rooms, and pool are also top notch: the breakfast porridge alone, in fact, is something I'd return for. 12. Petunia hotel If you've read Matt Haig's The Life Impossible, you'll be familiar with Es Vedrà, the stunning rock that shoots straight up from the sea and is considered mystical, magical, and a symbol of Ibiza. Petunia, a 42-room hotel owned by the Beaumier Group, offers jaw-dropping views of the limestone monolith, as well as a laidback, convivial atmosphere. Winding paths cheerfully guide you from the pool area, where a palette of dark green and marigold lends a contemporary, eclectic feel, to the rooms; there's also a rooftop terrace bar, La Mirada, where you can gaze at Es Vedrà over oysters, calamari or crudo. 13. Montesol Experimental hotel Housed in a 1933 building that was, in fact, Ibiza's first hotel, Montesol Experimental was taken over by the Experimental Group in 2021, whose first order of business was to give the 33-room property a sweeping-yet-tasteful renovation. While the neocolonial, buttercream façade—an icon overlooking the Passeig Vara de Rey below—was left untouched, inside, interior designer Dorothée Meilichzon (who also worked on Cowley Manor in the Cotswolds and the Henrietta Hotel in London) introduced eccentric colour combos such as pumpkin and pastel blue, patterned headboards and sofas, and geometric-print wallpaper. Don't miss the rooftop bar, which offers what the Experimental Group does best: brilliant cocktails. Address: Passeig de Vara de Rey, 2, 07800, Ibiza, Spain 14. Cala San Miguel Ibiza Resort hotel Forget everything you thought you knew about all-inclusive resorts. Sure, the Cala San Miguel Ibiza Resort (part of the Curio Collection by Hilton) is huge, like most resorts – 292 rooms and 12 restaurants – but by every other measure, there's no comparison. For starters, it's adults only: no screaming toddlers by the pool or hormonal teenagers loading up dinner plates with chicken nuggets and egg noodles. Then, there's the fact that 114 of those 292 rooms are part of The Club experience, which means private check-in, access to exclusive areas, larger rooms with options such as a private pool or sea views, and amenities by Natura Bissé. Finally, there's the fact that the 12 dining venues, including the new Beach House Cala San Miguel, were all curated by a renowned former El Bulli chef. A normal resort? Think again.
